Corporate Headshots

 

The Setup; classic blue back drop
Rear: 8' x 8' calumet portable backdrop
Left: 42" white shoot through umbrella, SB900  shooting Manual
Left: camera on heavy tripod
Right:  42" Photoflex Multi-Disk and holder (silver/black/gold/gold-silver

White Balance, Light Meter
Sekonic L358 light meter and Grey Card

Classic Blue Backdrop
One shoe flash through white umbrella
Black negative fill disk to right

Black and white conversion
Color portait with blue backdrop converted
in Photoshop / Nik Silver efex pro

High Key Portrait
2 flashes reflected off umbrellas at white backdrop
2 flashes reflected off white umbrellas as key and fill

I shoot quite a few of these head shots for business folks.  These are used for business cards, media advertising, business publications and as avatars on social networks.  Two primary styles are shown; classic colored background and classic high key.  I use a Calumet portable backdrop which allows a much smaller foot print and only one light stand in a highly portable easy to setup package.  Once the setup is ready to go, through-put is fairly fast.  I allow 4 to 6 shots per hour but often move along much faster.  

The setup for the classic color background is usually shoe flash shot through an umbrella left, with a reflective 42" disk on the right.  The blue backdrop portrait above has a black negative fill disk to provide about 2 stops of difference between the light on the key (left) versus fill (right.)  I had to use a black disk and the wall to the right was reflecting too much light.   The key light is 30-45 degrees left ("Rembrandt") and 24" inches away to create a very soft key light.  I shoot manual to avoid shot to shot differences that TTL and other auto program modes create; this is caused by differences in skin tone and clothes.  Not a big deal if your shooting one image, but the difference is very noticeable to a client when reviewing a screen full of thumbnails.  

The high key portrait requires two flashes blowing out a white backdrop, one key and one fill.  I set the flashes to over expose the backdrop according to the highlight and histogram on the backdrop.  If I change any camera setting I recheck the white backdrop flashes to avoid a blue or grey cast in the backdrop that I will have to deal with in post.  Key and flash are flashes reflected off umbrellas 45 deg left and right usually same distance and setting.  

In both setups sometimes I use a hair or background fill flash; sometimes this is a single flash shot through a 1/4" grid, or a flash reflected off a gold / silver reflective disk.  

Flashes are hot shoe Nikon SB900s or LP160; flash power is set using a Sekonik L358 light meter; so very simple once you get the hang of it. I trigger the flashes using Pocket Wizard Plus II's; I trigger one light with the pocket wizard and the rest are set to fire using the optical sync ~ the other flashes fire when the first flash fires.  I want to shoot at 1/200sec and f5.6 most of the time, and the light meter tells me how much flash power to use.  A few test shots and your ready to go without much guess work.  Almost all lights are of in the room especially if they are florescent, but at 1/200sec they don't contribute much to the image.    

I shoot a D300 or D700 at around 100mm focal length.  The D300 crop sensor with at 70mm (using a Nikor 35-70 f2.8 lens) is a great combination that has become one of my favorite setups. I shoot a grey card once all is setup as my reference, and shoot it again if I change any camera or flash settings.  I shoot mostly TIFF, sometimes RAW if I am having a challenge with a huge mix of color and bright lights are on and I can't turn them off. 

This kind of portrait work is very enjoyable if you like meeting new people and chatting which I do.  The work can be very efficient if you are careful with your setup; many shots are just about ready to go out of camera.  A touch of color (or black and white,) crop and your ready to go.  

I have worked in many different types of businesses and this often leads to other work.  Recently a head shot job turned into a referral to shoot lifestyle portraits for a media campaign for a hospital cancer treatment center.  Fun stuff.  

Storm light

~ right click the image and open in new window so you don't leave ~

DSC_0015 rwy 24 apch hollister storm web, originally uploaded by Steve Loos.

Balancing dark clouds with sunlight.  In this view the black clouds had just enough detail to be interesting, but dark enough that even the slightest underexposure and the image would loose all detail in the clouds.  The challenge was to expose the clouds so they look dark but have some detail, and at the same time not to over expose the sunlit portion of the image.

I did not to use a split grad filter or HDR as I very much wanted to keep the dark versus light contrast.  This is only possible if the difference between light and dark is not too great (usually 6 stops or so for our digital sensors.)  I was shooting late evening so was in luck that the sunlight was soft.  Remember good photography is 9 parts preparation and 1 part luck (or is it 9 parts luck?)

Here is the drill;

If you are not comfortable shooting in full manual keep your camera in one of the program modes (landscape is a good choice here) take a few frames and bracket the exposure.  To do this use the exposure control on your camera (it is the +/- button) and take a few photos bumping the exposure between the - and + side of the scale in your viewfinder.  Take a series of image and one of them will most likely have the balance you are looking for.  NOTE; the exposure control is the most important custom setting you'll use, and is the FIRST control you should read up on and practice!

If you are comfortable shooting in full manual try this.  Fill the frame with the clouds (you can zoom in or just re-frame) and expose for neutral exposure; check the image to see if you have a the detail and exposure in the clouds you are looking for.  I like dark clouds to stay dark with just a bit of detail as in the image above.  Then re-frame the image and take your shot. If the sunlit area is well exposed your golden!

The first challenge on storm photography is safety.  Many photographers have been struck by lighting, fallen into swollen ditches and creeks that were dry just a few minutes before, and struck by cars who's drivers don't have good sense to slow down or stop in heavy rain or hail.  Its easy to loose yourself in the viewfinder - but remember mother nature will spank you, severely for being careless.

The second challenge is that  the light changes by the second.  This is not a place to learn new features of your camera!  Keep it simple, try only what you know and you'll grab a few good shots!

Rainy Day HDR

Rainy day HDR

Once I a while I play with HDR, but not often.  All images are art, and a such they each have their own beauty, but I don’t connect with heavily processed HDR images.  This was a day where clouds would be a challenge; the clouds were low and flat and very bright, and it would be hard to retain much detail in the mountains while keeping the cloud exposure within reason.  I did not have any split grads (oops) and so shot some bracketed images and called it “in the can!” (sorry, have watched too many Peter Lik shows lately!)

This is one of my favorite drives here in San Benito County.  Browns Valley is a historical cattle ranch deep in the rural area of the mountains.  Browns Valley Road winds through the valley before climbing a steep ridge and dropping down into the Panoche Valley.  Along this ridge Bald and Golden Eagles, as well as Peregrine Falcon are a common site.  At just over 3,000 feet above sea level you can find snow in these hills. 

Time lapse made easy!

Time Lapse Photography

sorry folks, Blogger is not able to display videos right now, please follow this link to view

hint; right click, open in tab or new window

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3911769718728&set=vb.1413945363&type=2&theater

Many new cameras have the ability to shoot time lapse.  Time lapse is simply a series of still images put into a movie; a movie is nothing more than a series of still images. Take a series of 500 still JPG images, load them into a movie maker software, and hit "make my movie" its that simple!  This post is a short overview to the time lapse photography; tons of free information can be found on-line, or just send me an email!  

How to setup camera?

Tripod:  the camera must be on a sturdy tripod, and can not be moved or bumped during the photography

Focus: put the camera in manual focus; this way the focus will not be int erupted by someone very close to the camera as in the painters above.  Take a test shot to check focus before shooting

Auto program without flash:  let your camera do the work; aperture or shutter priority can be better choices at times but when your starting out auto is fine; I shot this movie in auto.

Image Format:  shoot basic JPG files in normal mode.  These movies are viewed on small screens so using a large photo file size is not necessary and just slows things down.  

Battery and Memory Card:  fresh battery of course, and format your memory card prior to taking photos.  Its much easier to pull large amounts of photos off when there are no other photos.  

My Setup:

Nikon D5100 + Nikon 17-70 f3.5 mid zoom at 17mm, manual focus

Auto program mode, Nikon D-lighting set to high, Nikon picture control set to vivid

Manual focus (checked in live view)

Interval shooting every 15 seconds, I let the camera run 3 hours while the work was done.

Movie clip in windows movie maker (no music I know, will add some later.)

What interval between frames?

This depends on what you are filming.  The deck work above could have been shot every 30 seconds for a jerky movie (lots of movement between frames,) or every 1 second for a smooth movie (less movement between frames); I shot at 15 second intervals.   If you are shooting for a very long time (say 8 hours) the interval between frame becomes more important; if your are not careful you will end up with way to many images.  Here are two examples:

* 1 frame per second is 60 frames per minute.  60 frames per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 8 hours = 28,800 images!

* 15 frames per second is 4 frames per minute: 4 frames per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 8 hours = 1,920 images ~ much better!

How long will the movie be?

Most movies play back at 24 frames per second. (some at 30fps)  You can slow this down to make your movie longer, but it will be more jerky.  

Divide the number of frames by the playback frame rate per second:

* 900 frames divided by 30 frames per second = 30 second movie

* 900 frames divided by 10 frames per second = 90 second movie

How to make the movie?

I used windows movie maker;  simple and free software included with windows since XP.  I also use Apple Quick Time Pro ($40 ~ and more options,) and Picassa a free Google product.  

Each program has its own procedure, but in a nutshell you go the folder with all your images and drag those images into the movie program.  You can add a song from you hard disk if you like - there is an "add music button" in each program.  The click auto "make my movie" button (slightly different name in each software, you get the picture, er ~ uh, movie!)  

And just like that you made a movie!

a quiet place

a quiet place, originally uploaded by Steve Loos.

I shoot high end DLSR’s for my professional photography work, and while those cameras and lenses are absolutely incredible pieces of equipment, they do not “make” better photographs.

I enjoy shooting old manual film cameras for landscape, but on this hot afternoon I had only my smart phone, a 2 year old Driod X. This is a beautiful hike up a 1,500ft peak, and offers sweeping views of San Diego Bay at the top. This particular trail wanders through thick brush and small creeks before sending you up (straight bloody up) the side of the mountain. On the way down, in the soft light of late afternoon, I took a rest at this beautiful little stream. The scene was beautiful, and I framed and snapped this shot using my phone. The light was soft and even and the camera did a great job of capturing the soft details in the shades.

I am a great fan of following the work of photographers from around the world on websites such as Flickr and Aminus3. The fantastic, creative, beautiful images posted by photographers from around the world have nothing to do with equipment and everything to do with vision and art. I am as happy with this little image snapped with a cell phone as I am with any taken with my expensive cameras.

I converted the color digital image to black and white in a two step process; first I loaded the image to Photoshop and opened in Nik Software Color Efex 4, and use a “Glamour Glow” Filter to saturate and contrast the image in kind of a dream like way. I learned this technique on Moose Petersons website www.moosepeterson.com, but take it one step further. Once I have saturated the image, I open in Nik Software Silver Efex 2 and convert to black and white, and use the controls to amplify blacks, sharpen and add contrast and border. I then save as a Photoshop file, flatten and save as high quality JPG.